AO3

• Eyewitness testimony is often used after violent crimes that have caused eyewitnesses high anxiety. Research on eyewitness testimony often has no emotional impact on the participant, resulting in low validity. So research that does not cause anxiety cannot be generalised to the courtroom as the participants don’t have the same mental state as the eyewitnesses.
• The weapon focus effect may be testing for the effects of surprise rather than anxiety. For example, Pickel found that the highest levels of accuracy of EWT were experienced in the condition with high i.e. a raw chicken in a hairdressing salon. This suggests that the weapon focus effect can only be used to explain certain influences of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT.